Re: [Eligibility-discuss] Handling the fear of "bogus" recall petitions

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Y'all have been typing busily while I was sleeping, so let me answer Adrian's point first (and I did read John Klensin's reply too), and then Pete's question:
On 25-Oct-19 23:30, Adrian Farrel wrote:
> Hi Brian,
> 
> I think I disagree quite strongly.
> 
>>> c.  Those who have never attended.
>>
>> also seems to me to be a proxy for "Those who have very
>> limited personal knowledge of the person being recalled,
>> so may not be capable of fair assessment of their conduct."
>>
>> Personally I'm more worried about that than the risk of gaming
>> or DOSsing the system. Now while it's true that a non-attendee
>> might have frequently met the recallee at (say) ITU-T meetings,
>> it's still probably the best proxy we've got for "very limited personal
>> knowledge". Assuming, of course, that we think such personal
>> knowledge is needed.
> 
> Or, at least, I did agree until the last sentence.

Firstly, yes, we are *only* talking about who can sign a recall petition, so it's reasonable to aks whether personal knowledge is needed, or whether the "target" of a petition is just a pattern of behaviour that can be observed remotely.

> Struggling to circumvent Godwin's Law here, but you don't have to have personal acquaintance with someone to know that they are not doing their job well. It is not material that they are going through a hard time and need help and counselling: hopefully they have friends who can see this and help them. If is not relevant that they are really a nice person: they can be a great socialite with a GSOH, but if they have only ever done harmful things in their position, that is what is being looked at.
> 
> But, contrarywise, the exact point, the substance, of a recall petition is based on "personal knowledge" of the recallee. That is, they have done something sufficiently egregious and notable to the petitioners that a recall is deemed appropriate.

I'm inclined to agree. That's why I wrote "assuming", in fact. In other words, it should be clear (and, BTW, consistent with our anti-harassment stance) that the target of a recall petition is a pattern of (mis)behaviour, not a person as such. So really the criterion for petitioners should be that they are in a position to observe patterns of behaviour, IMO.

On 26-Oct-19 03:42, Pete Resnick wrote:

> Brian and Eliot (and anyone else who shares similar concerns):
>> I did not see either of you address Adrian's proposed mitigation: Would 
> requiring some number of physical participants to also sign the petition 
> allay your concerns? If so, what would that number be? If not, why not?

The alternative would be some complex criteria that petitioners must have been subscribed to N mailing lists for M months, or co-authored at least X drafts, or something like that. But that quickly becomes a bureaucratic nightmare. So I'd be more inclined to go with Adrian's idea, with maybe 1/3 of petitioners needing to be Nomcom-eligible.

Regards
   Brian